UTEP Director of Athletics Jim Senter announced on Monday that Anna Claire Thomas has been appointed Assistant Athletic Director for Communications. Thomas comes to the Sun City from LA Tech, where she served as Assistant Director of Athletic Communications for the last seven years.
Thomas will serve as the primary communications contact for the UTEP football program and select spring sports, while overseeing all aspects of the Athletic Communications unit. She will be a member of the UTEP Athletics Senior Staff and External Relations Team. Within her new role, Thomas will interface with the Creative Services, Marketing, Miner Athletic Club and Ticketing areas within the department.
"We're excited to welcome Anna Claire to the Miner family," Senter said. "She has accumulated a great deal of experience at a young age and is well-respected within Conference USA. During the interview process, she stood out for her positive energy and her plan to collaborate efficiently with the various External units to increase interest, excitement, loyalty and revenue for UTEP Athletics."
"I am excited to join the UTEP athletic department and grateful for the opportunity to become a member of the Miner family," Thomas said. "I was fortunate to spend the last seven years at my alma mater and knew it would take a special place to leave Louisiana Tech. The opportunity to collaborate with the great people at UTEP was too good to pass up and I am eager to get to work promoting the Miner student-athletes and programs."
In her current capacity with the Bulldogs, Thomas served as the primary communications contact for the football, men's golf, men's and women's cross country and track and field programs over the last three years. Previously she was the primary contact for baseball, volleyball and women's bowling, as well as the secondary contact for football. In 2016, she was named the youngest female Division I primary football contact in the country at the age of 26.
Her duties at LA Tech, in addition to promoting the Bulldogs' student athletes, coaches and teams, included managing local, regional and national media coverage and coordinating the needs of national television crews. She created graphics and various promotional items to distribute on social media platforms, including those recognizing conference and national award winners, All-Academic award recipients and All-Americans. She covered two NCAA Softball Regionals and one NCAA Baseball Regional, along with handling sports information duties for five bowl games and two Conference USA football championship games. She worked with Adobe Creative Suite to produce media guides, game notes and game programs. She served on the stat crew for numerous sports. She also aided in two website redesigns for LATechSports.com. In a supervisory role, she trained and oversaw student workers in areas such as stat crew training and feature writing.
In 2015, Thomas' volleyball media guide was named second-best in the nation by the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA). She won numerous sports information awards by the Louisiana Sports Writers Association, including her 2014 baseball game notes, 2016 football game notes and 2017 football media guide being judged best in the state.
Prior to joining the Athletic Communications field, Thomas was Sports Editor (September 2010-May 2012) and Editor in Chief (June-August 2012) of the Tech Talk student newspaper in Ruston.
A native of Monroe, La., Thomas earned her bachelor's degree in Journalism from LA Tech in 2012.
She will start her duties at UTEP on July 29.
